Free Criminal Love: A Billionaire Romance by Monique Hodge Page A

the same way men looked at her older and prettier
sister. She loved it.
    Hadley was already
compromised by Jackson, and they hadn’t even met. She swept her short red hair
away from her face and took a deep breath.
    The door to the
cabin opened and Tanner walked in with a frown.
    “I found the
target, but… well. I don’t think we’re going to get very close,” he said.
Hadley’s twin brothers were young, and they hadn’t completed too many high
profile heists at their age. Still, they were good in their assessments, and
she trusted them. Tanner looked down at his phone which held his reconnaissance
data. “His bodyguards? Totally armed.”
    This was
unexpected.
    It was almost
impossible to get guns on this ship, and there is no way they would have made
an exception for Jackson, Hadley thought. She wondered why he felt the need
to have armed bodyguards. Even if he has seen me on the ship, he didn’t know
before we boarded.
    Hadley’s mother
swore.
    “But,” Tanner
continued, smiling down at his cellphone. “I have a plan. Or at least an idea.
He spends a lot of time in the Cabana bar, chatting up girls. It looks like he
is trying to get a girl for the night. I think Piper could seduce him.”
    Piper smiled,
because if there was one thing Piper loved more than stealing, it was sleeping
with men. Although Hadley knew her older sister had a good heart – outside of
family business that is – and most of the money she stole from their targets
went to her two daughters, Hadley’s sweet little nieces, who would one day
follow their crooked mother’s footsteps. It was something that broke Hadley’s
heart, and a future she didn’t want any future children of her own if she had
any.
    But Hadley
paused at Tanner’s words.
    Chatting up
girls?
    It went against
the profile they had made the last few days on the ship. Jackson wasn’t against
flirtation, Hadley observed, but it seemed like a sudden change to try taking a
woman back to his cabin suite on the final night before the ship arrived to
port. She wanted to say something, that clearly something was off about their
plan, but Piper had set aside her pistol and had dove into her bag looking for
a slinky dress.
    I can’t
believe this is my family, Hadley thought.
    “It’s good I
packed my cocktail dress,” Piper said, reaching into her suitcase and pulling
out a red, strapless body con dress. Their mother made a tsk sound, but
she was practical enough not to forbid it. “He seemed way out of my league before,
but I’m certain I can trick him for the night.”
    Hadley was never
volunteered for seduction ploys. Unlike her sister, Hadley was plain and
studious, and if she weren’t wearing contacts she’d look even more dowdy in her
pink blouse and frayed denim shorts than she already did.
    But as she
thought of Jackson – the target she corrected herself, since he was clearly a
threat – Hadley couldn’t help but think of the twenty-nine-year-old society
heartthrob. She had seen him in the glossy pages of her roommate’s gossip
tabloids for the last year. Everyone wanted to be around him, and because of
that he was frequently trailed by his bodyguards.
    Never in those
articles was there any mention of one night stands.
    There is no
way we are getting away with this, Hadley thought. She imagined him in his
crisp, navy suit standing over her fallen body, her gun just out of reach of
her hand. We’re missing something. There is no way we are going to survive
this!
    But of course
the family that extorted together stayed together, and though Hadley didn’t
enjoy the family business, she would do anything for her family. In return, her
parents had sent her off to college so she could one day study medicine, though
they thought it was amusing she would choose such a poorly paid profession.
    Hadley had only
agreed to join her family on this heist to make sure they came home. It was
supposed to be their last hurrah (though she sincerely doubted they could